LS Re: Value


Hugo Fjelsted Alroe (alroe@vip.cybercity.dk)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 19:55:01 +0100


Bo, thanks for your thorough reply to my preliminary ideas on the marriage
of Peirce and Pirsig. Lets see if we can push it further.

<snip>
>What dissatisfied Charles Peirce was the DYADIC logic (read:
>metaphysics) prevalent in his time. He did not call it subject/object
>metaphysics, but I see no hindrance to draw a parallel between these
>two. SOM is dyadism itself. His alternative was the TRIADIC logic of
>semiosis (Greek sign=semeion)

Yes, I have no objection to this, and I will return to the connection
between logic and metaphysics below.

<snip>
> For the doctor the red spots are sign of measles, for
>the mother merely signs of something wrong with her child. They are
>nothing IN THEMSELVES, there is always a relationship: a context.
>This is what you refer to as contextualism: Dewey and Bateson for
>instance?.

Yes. The concept of context is a multifacetted one, but I think Peirce's
semeiotics points out a basic core of contextualism. More below.

>At this point Peirce is at the same stage as Phaedrus of ZMM
>when he reached the "trinity" conclusion:
>
>Peirce: Interpreter Object Primary sign.
>Pirsig: Subject Object Quality.
>
>Phaedrus did not stop there, he went on to discard the subject and
>object spokes and only quality was left as the primary reality. When
>Phaedrus reappears in LILA he has constructed another "figure" which
>is neither monadic, dyadic nor triadic. The mystic quality is a
>Dynamic "ocean" in which the various static wave/patterns have
>formed. The patterns are not different from the ocean except for
>being PATTERNS.

Yes, quite so, but beware that this is a shift from a logical/analtical
viewpoint to a metaphysical/generic viewpoint. Yet, and this is an
important point, even the dynamic/static or 'ocean/patterns' figure is a
sort of logic, it is a structure of necessity used in an analysis of
reality. In this I argue that the distinction between logic and metaphysics
is not as sharp as one might think, and support your parallel between
(dyadic) logic and (SOM) metaphysics above. And this is why I find it
justifiable to see how these two 'logics' might connect instead of
choosing between one or the other, as you seem to advocate? The connection
between the dynamic-static structure and the triadic semeiotic structure is
what I have on occasion called 'evolutionary logic', but which I would
prefer to call 'evolutionary metaphysics'.

I find the mail from Tom Burke to the JDewey-L, which I posted earlier, so
apropriate here, that I wish to repeat the finishing paragraph:
"This basic philosophical stance -- a pre-metaphysical theory of experience
couched in concrete concerns for better and worse conduct of life -- is a
foundation on the basis of which metaphysics (in the only acceptable sense
of the word, says Dewey) is then rendered at all viable. In the end, the
differences between ethics, phenomenology, epistemology, logic, ontology,
etc. -- all couched within a single philosophical view of experience -- are
rather subtle, being differences as to immediate aims and methods rather
than in subject matters."

>If Peirce had undergone the same development the "primary sign" spoke
>of his tripod should have taken on the same overwhelming importance -
>after all it is clear that the "illness" of the child is more primary
>than the "doctor" or the "diagnosis". Then Peirce would have returned
>with a "Metaphysics of Signs" - the MOS (Even better because it is
>SOM backwards!). He would have postulated a Primary (Dynamic) Sign
>out of which four (Static) Sign levels have crystallized: Inorganic
>signs, Biological signs, Social signs and Intellectual signs.
>
>But Peirce could not go that far. In the nineteen-sixties it was
>madness to give up the subject/object division (and Phaedrus suffered
>accordingly), in the eighteen- sixties it wasn't conceivable at all
>and Peirce was stuck with the impossible situation of a dyadic
>mind/matter universe in which a triadic logic reigned. A problem that
>several squad members still struggle with.

Peirce did in fact provide what we would call a 'metaphysics' but he
despiced the closed philosophical systems of the past and preferred to
provide 'bricks and mortar for a metaphysics' (not sure of the excact
words). This is the title of a translation into danish of a series of
articles in The Monist 1891-1893, made by Peder Voetman Christiansen. These
articles provide an outline of Peirce's metaphysics, and it has recently
been reissued in Denmark (I dont have the excact reference handy). I have
not yet really understood what Peirce is saying, but the key bricks are an
evolutionary cosmology, which perhaps is entailed in his synechism
(continuity or connectedness as a basic) and a tychism (~indeterminism),
but the tychastic (by chance) process is countered by anancastic (mechanic
- probably again entailed by his synechism) and agapistic (determined by
love) processes in evolution. The latter idea might be found in Pirsig too,
in his aesthetics - a movement towards the good; but it is certainly not
part of the neodarwinian theory of evolution - I think a closer analysis of
this 'harmonic' or Gaia-like aspect of evolution is called for.

Anyway, there is a tension in Peirce, between an anti-metaphysical stance
and some obviously metaphysical work, but this might be due to the chaotic
nature of the heritage of Peirce's works; he did plenty and perhaps we
should not wonder why he did not do more. And, in fact, I am not sure how
far Peirce did progress on the connection between his evolutionary
metaphysics and his triadic logic (semeiotics). But this is the direction I
want to move, and where Pirsigs metaphysics might provide another perspective.

So, the reason I keep pursuing Peirce's ideas in connection with MoQ is:
1) That we do need some sort of logical structure. This goes counter to the
Zen way, and Pirsig in some places, but pursuing a metaphysics is a pursuit
of such a logical structure, a way of defining the indefinable. Pirsig saw
that it is not possible to get an absolute hold of reality, and his going
for it anyway is the sort of pragmatic view, that we do need *some* handle
on reality. Or perhaps this is just a choice between two ways of living,
between Zen and the intellectual life. And given the intellectual life, we
must pursue a better handle on reality.
2) The problem with the established dyadic logic is that it does not allow
room for the subject-object divide, the divide is left outside the logical
structure, with all the problems following the neglect of the divide which
Pirsig pointed out.
3) As I have tried to indicate, the subject-object divide can be included
in the triadic logical structure, it can be made explicit (this being part
of a Peirce-Pirsig marriage). And this allows first of all for
contextualism, the 'many truths from different viewpoints', which is badly
needed in a society torn between absolutism and relativism. And it will
allow for the reconnection of logic and metaphysics, and hence of science
and nature, because it allows for a coherent view of us as being in and of
our world. Such a coherent view has not really been possible for a long
while, with a dyadic logic as foundation for philosophy and science, and
before that with religion as the foundation of philosophy. Off course
there has been all sorts of efforts towards a unified view, and we are all
depending on these efforts, but the transgression which we are in the
beginning or the middle of now, requires the letting go of parts of our
foundation, trashing what seemed to hold us floating in the aspiration to
make some better vessel.
  
Regards

Hugo

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